Browsing by Autor "Nilo Lima"

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Delving into the Divisive Waters of River Basin Planning in Bolivia: A Case Study in the Cochabamba Valley
(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021) Nilo Lima; Cláudia Coleoni; Wilford Rincón; Zulema Gutierrez; Freddy Zubieta; Sergio Carrera Nunez; Jorge Iriarte; Cecilia Saldías; David Purkey; Marisa Escobar
River basin planning in Bolivia is a relatively new endeavor that is primed for innovation and learning. One important learning opportunity relates to connecting watershed planning to processes within other planning units (e.g., municipalities) that have water management implications. A second opportunity relates to integrating watershed management, with a focus on land-based interventions, and water resources management, with a focus on the use and control of surface and groundwater resources. Bolivia’s River Basin Policy and its primary planning instrument, the River Basin Master Plan (PDC in Spanish), provide the relevant innovation and learning context. Official guidance related to PDC development lacks explicit instructions related to the use of analytical tools, the definition of spatially and temporally dis-aggregated indicators to evaluate specific watershed and water management interventions, and a description of the exact way stakeholders engage in the evaluation process. This paper describes an effort to adapt the tenets of a novel planning support practice, Robust Decision Support (RDS), to the official guidelines of PDC development. The work enabled stakeholders to discern positive and negative interactions among water management interventions related to overall system performance, hydrologic risk management, and ecosystem functions; use indicators across varying spatial and temporal reference frames; and identify management strategies to improve outcomes and mitigate cross-regional or inter-sectorial conflicts.
Zooming into the water users: A multi-scale, interactive participatory approach to co-develop Water Management Plans in Bolivian River Basins
(2020) Nilo Lima; Héctor Angarita; M. I. Escobar‐Arias; Wilford Rincón; Sergio Carrera Nunez; David Purkey
&lt;p&gt;In Bolivia, since 2006 the Ministry of Environment and Water, through the National Watershed Plan, has developed the conceptual framework and national policy for Watershed Management. At present, this national policy is still in the process of learning and construction from its application in various river basins, principally through the development of Watershed Master Plans.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Three principles guide the development of this national planning effort: i. the recognition of the growing dependence on participatory processes as a forum to identify and enable legitimate water management and governance options, ii. the need to plan for an uncertain future caused by climate change and other societal prerogatives iii. the systemic analysis of the territory incorporating biophysical, sectoral and regional interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here we present results and lessons learned of this process in the formulation of the Master Plan of the R&amp;#237;o Rocha Basin (PDCR); With a population of ~ 1,500,000 people (13% of Bolivia&amp;#8217;s population), the basin has high levels of water scarcity that feed an intricate network of conflicts related to access, governance, and environmental degradation. The PDCR is a planning opportunity to enable the necessary conditions to resolve current conflicts and set the foundation of sustainable water management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Robust decision support (RDS) has been adopted as a guiding framework, constructing a participatory process that considers uncertainties and strategies within an array of management options for the system. To accommodate the large disparities in water access across interests represented at different regions and scales of the Rio Rocha Basin, we implemented two innovations in the RDS process: first, a set of 24 quantitative indices that can operate at several nested scales of planning sub-units (i.e. from independent irrigation units or household water supply service areas, to the entire river basin), and second the use of an interactive &amp;#8220;hard-coupled&amp;#8221; decision dashboard to the Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP). In combination, this innovations enabled a diverse audience of actors to: i) explore the positive and negative interactions of water management, production systems, hazards and risks management, and ecosystem functions ii) identify disparities in the performance of a proposed plan between scales and ii) analyze and compare different management strategies interactively to improve outcomes and identify and mitigate emerging regional or sectorial conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a result, the PDCR established a set of regional and intersectoral actions for 2025 and 2040, which integrate infrastructure, efficiency, pollution control, and territorial and productive planning actions, accompanied by institutional strengthening and capacity development measures. The plan expects to increase access and coverage of the demand for safe water, improve irrigation access, enable long term sustainable exploitation of groundwater and establish synergies with the existing sanitation plan to achieve additional improvements in the environmental quality of the Rio Rocha.&lt;/p&gt;